This disclosure generally relates to electronic displays for airplane and more particularly relates to an integrated display for displaying information from a plurality of sources, as well as indicating the relationship between selected information.
Passenger and cargo airplane incorporate numerous sensors for obtaining information about the condition of various components and systems. The status indicators may be provided to various on-board data handling systems. Certain systems, such as the engine indications and crew alerting system (“EICAS”) offer detailed information to the flight crew on the condition of various components in a jet engine. Other systems provide information about the status of the electrical system, hydraulic system, fuel system, landing gear system, flight control system, etc. There are hundreds of sensors that can potentially provide status indications to the flight crew.
As used herein, “status indication” refers to information providing status information or condition about an airplane component or system to the flight crew. Status indications are particularly important when an abnormal condition occurs, especially during flight. Thus, for the most part, the flight crew can focus on abnormal conditions as reflected by a status indication. A status indication informs the flight crew as to which airplane components or systems are not functioning properly. Depending on the nature of the status indication, the information can be very detailed, or very high level. The status indications can be presented to the flight crew in a variety of conventional ways, from a simple warning light to a text message on a computerized flight display. Evaluation of multiple simultaneous status indications can be difficult for the flight crew.
Organizing, processing, and presenting status information to the flight crew informs the crew of a potential issue or condition, but the flight crew must still adequately respond to the condition. The flight crew must be able to readily understand the meaning of the status condition, its implication for the operability of the airplane, and its relative impact to the operation of the current flight. During an abnormal condition, several status indicators may be reported, and it can be difficult for the flight crew to quickly assess the operational consequences of each status indicator. Once the impact is assessed, the flight crew must plan and perform any required work-around procedures associated with the status condition.
A typical flight deck has an alerting system that is not centralized. The alerting, checklists, system synoptic displays, and systems controls are distributed across the flight deck and require interpretation and repeated re-orienting of pilot attention. Controls for the system interface are placed on the overhead panel but the effects of a system failure are presented at a high-level individual system view in the system synoptic displays. Not all airplanes have electronic checklists or system synoptics and those that do are not integrated.
In particular, there is currently no integrated depiction of overall airplane health in the flight deck or the system to alert the flight crew to a trend toward a non-normal situation before an airplane system malfunction or an airplane flight path and current aerodynamic energy state the airplane is currently experiencing and/or will enter if corrections are not made. Some airplane incidents have been attributed to the lack of energy state awareness on the part of the flight crew or confusion on the part of the pilots, who may not understand the system failure or how the checklist will fix the failure.
It would be advantageous to provide a status indication display system that presents an integrated picture of the overall health and energy status of an airplane.